Red Mars

By Kim Stanley Robinson

First edition, first impression: London: HarperCollins, 1992. Signed by the author in red ink on the title page, above his printed name.

Original red cloth, the spine lettered in silver. In the original unclipped dust jacket, priced £14.99 net on the front flap, with Mel Grant’s illustration of the Martian landscape running across both panels. Arthur C. Clarke’s tribute is printed beneath the title on the front panel.

A fine copy: the binding square and tight, the cloth bright, and the contents clean.

The dust jacket is fine, with only very minimal traces of wear at the foot of the spine.

Red Mars is the first volume of Robinson’s Mars trilogy. Green Mars followed in 1993 and Blue Mars in 1996. The sequence follows the settlement and terraforming of the planet, beginning with the “first hundred” colonists. The UK edition preceded the first American edition, which Bantam Spectra published in 1993. The novel won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel for 1992 and the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Clarke’s verdict on the jacket reads: “the best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written”.